1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a method and system to protect a consumer from identity theft and misuse of his private credit information stored with the various credit reporting bureaus.
More particularly, the invention relates to a method and system to protect, manage and control access to information in consumers' credit reports.
2. Background Art
TransUnion, Equifax and Experian are the largest credit reporting bureaus (alternately referred to as credit reporting agencies) that collect and disseminate credit history and information, or credit reports, about consumers.
Banks, merchants, credit card issuing companies, and other businesses and credit agencies use the credit reports to make credit granting decisions. Currently, no bank, merchant or other agency generally needs any authorization to run a credit check or obtain a credit report on a consumer. Such credit inquiries can be adverse to the consumer, and does lower what is called the Beacon Score. The Beacon Score is used by banks, merchants and other credit agencies to grant credit.
Thieves obtain a consumer's personal information and then they run a credit report in order to gain all of an individual's personal information in order to steal his identity. Once a thief has stolen an identity, they attempt to obtain credit in the name of his victim. When a merchant obtains a credit report in the name of the victim it lowers the Beacon Score whether or not credit is granted to the thief, thereby impacting the victim without his knowledge. When the real person (victim) attempts to obtain credit they may be denied based upon erroneous information contained in the credit bureau reports.
There are limited measures available to consumers to protect against adverse consequences of unwanted credit inquiries, such and provisions in the credit laws regarding “permissible purpose” and destination between certain types of credit inquiries for reporting purposes. A couple of states have enacted so-called “security freeze” laws by which a consumer can lock his or her credit report from unwanted inquiries, and then control unlocking of their report and to whom it will be given, and a few other states are investigating implementation of such measures. However, such protections are currently implemented on a state-by-state basis, and where implemented, are burdensome to the consumer and require the consumer to interface with multiple agencies at a time.
The present invention is born of the need to protect and to control personal credit information, and to provide a system, method and service that accomplishes such protection and control with ease and convenience on the part of the consumer. Typically, the credit reporting bureaus and not the individual decides who has access to the personal information and when they can access that information. The consumer may not know that the credit information being accessed is correct or incorrect.
The credit reporting bureaus have become overloaded from consumer complaints regarding incorrect and sometimes fraudulent information contained in a consumer's credit report information. The system of the present invention restricts access to a consumer credit report to only those for which the consumer has expressly entered the code for or which the consumer enters his personal access code at the merchant location.
Various systems related generally to data inquiry and data protection are known in the art, and are disclosed in, for example, Hoffeld, US Pub. No. 2002/0091842; Zingher et al., US Pub. No. 2003/0163483; Richardson, US Pub. No. 2003/0037001; Benaloh, US Pub. No. 2003/0233542; and US Pub. No. 2004/0054919. However, a method, system and service to fully protect, manage and control access to information in credit reports with relative ease on the part of the consumer is not available or known in the art.